


Echoes in a Hollow Tree

by verboseDescription



Series: To The Moon and Back [5]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Claustrophobia, Healing, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), The Buried - Freeform, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24867394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verboseDescription/pseuds/verboseDescription
Summary: "It’s hard to say what I noticed first. I’m not sure there really was a “first,” honestly. Everything kind of hit me all at once. One second, I was thinking about how hot it was, and how much I wanted to go home, and the next second, I was with the trees, completely lost and surrounded by sobbing wood."Statement of Kira Mendelson regarding their childhood trauma of getting trapped inside a tree, and their recovery.
Series: To The Moon and Back [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1715521
Comments: 20
Kudos: 68





	Echoes in a Hollow Tree

**Statement of Kira Mendelson**

_Statement taken Friday, January 22, 2016_

I wasn’t planning on telling anyone about this, especially not to you. I only came in here because I was wondering if this was some weirdly timed Halloween pop-up store. I definitely wasn’t expecting a group of researchers asking about my childhood trauma. Aren’t you guys supposed to be in DC? What’d you travel all the way down here for?

My roommate told me about you guys. I don’t think he trusts you. He says a lot of what’s inside your foundation is real, but that being the one telling those stories never does anything but hurt. 

So, I’ll tell you something, but maybe it won’t be the truth. Or maybe it will. I’m not sure how much of a choice I’ll have in the matter.

You have to fact-check these anyways, right? It’s not like this is any extra work. At least, I hope it’s not. I really don’t want to be the asshole making things harder for you guys, so if you want, feel free to just toss this. It’s not like I’m really expecting you to do anything about it, anyways. It’s probably too late for that.

Sorry, you don’t care about any of this, do you? You want to hear about my story. So, here it is.

I was eleven when I heard the trees cry.

My parents had been trying to get me to go outside with them for a while by that point. I didn’t do any sports, and I didn’t really have any friends, so most of the time, all I did was sit inside and draw. They thought I needed to get more exercise. I hated them for that for a while, but they were right. I wasn’t getting enough sunlight, and I needed a hobby to distract me from the fact that I was too weird for everyone in my middle school. Technically, I did have friends, but most of them only liked me because of how easy it was to convince me to go along with something stupid. My parents thought that if I joined a sport, I’d at least learn something about camaraderie and teamwork and I’d finally stop giving parts of myself away to anyone who’d asked for it, but they both knew I wouldn’t have put in the work to see it as anything other than a chore. Still, I needed exercise, and my dad thought I needed some fresh air, so he took me hiking.

The funny thing is, it wasn’t even a big hike. It was just a small trail near a park close to our synagogue. I’d see people walking their dogs there all the time. But for some reason, things were different when we went.

I didn’t realize what it was right away. I thought it was just the wind at first, but there wasn’t really a breeze. And there weren’t any animals, so I couldn’t blame the noise on them. If I was paying more attention, I’d probably realize how strange that was. Even if all the squirrels and birds mysteriously vanished, I should have still heard a distant bark or two from dogs playing nearby. But the only other noise I heard was my dad, talking about how lucky we were to live so close to such a nice trail. 

The crying definitely wasn’t coming from him, so I ignored it. I mean, this was the most exercise I’d gotten in months. I was way more concerned about how dirty my shoes were getting, and how annoying all the rocks on the path were. I definitely wasn’t thinking about any ghost trees.

Still, I was starting to lag behind. My dad kept waiting for me, encouraging me to keep the pace and I kept rolling my eyes in response.

It’s kind of funny, actually. Looking back, I remember wondering what the hell he was worried about. Like, did he really think I was going to get lost _here?_

And then, well… I did.

I don’t know how I got there. I was following the exact same trail markers as my dad. But for some reason, the trail I followed led me right into a clearing circled by shaking trees.

It’s hard to say what I noticed first. I’m not sure there really was a “first,” honestly. Everything kind of hit me all at once. One second, I was thinking about how hot it was, and how much I wanted to go home, and the next second, I was with the trees, completely lost and surrounded by sobbing wood.

I shouldn’t have made so much noise. Once the trees noticed I was there, they started shouting, begging me to help them find a way out. I started to insist that I was just as lost as they were when I realized that’s not what they were asking. I wasn’t talking to sentient trees that had somehow strayed too far from their plot of land or whatever other stupid thing I was hoping it was in the moment. I was talking to _people._ Something had trapped them in those trees, and the only chance any of them had to get out was if I did something.

Yeah. A lot of pressure for a kid, huh?

Maybe I was being too hard on myself. I definitely wouldn’t expect an eleven-year-old to save me from anything now and honestly, I’m not sure if there was anything I could have done. But at the time, there was only one fact that mattered. If no one had found this part of the forest until now, then there was no telling how long these people would have to wait for someone else to come along. Which meant that this was my problem.

It terrified me.

I couldn’t move. Not because I was stuck, but because I was just so _scared._

What could I do against something that had put this choir of voices in so much pain? I was just a kid! I couldn’t even handle ordering for myself at a restaurant. How was I supposed to know what the right thing to do in a situation like this was?

I had to make a choice.

Sooner or later, my dad would have to notice I had gone missing, though I wasn’t sure he’d find me. There didn’t seem to be any trail markers nearby, either. Even if I wanted to leave, I had no idea which direction to go. And if I started walking, there was a chance I’d end up walking away from my dad.

Might as well just help, right? That was what a good person would do.

I asked them what they needed from me. They told me to come closer. I didn’t _want_ to, but when I hesitated, the trees started crying again.

“Please,” they said. “Please, we’re in so much pain. You can’t leave us like this. What kind of person would leave us here?”

I walked closer. What else could I do? I’d never been strong enough to stand up to someone else’s tears.

I asked again what I was supposed to do, but there were so many voices, and they all had a different idea about what would help. The only thing they all could agree on was that I definitely needed to keep moving towards them, so that’s what I did.

And then a tree ate me.

It felt a bit like getting tripped by a root. I mean, I guess I _did_ trip on a root, but the ground fell with me. I was trapped underneath one of the trees. But was I really underneath it? I thought I was, but it seemed just as likely that I was inside of the roots itself. With so much darkness and dirt, it was hard for me to say that anything was certain other than that I was trapped.

Either way, it didn’t matter. What mattered was I was trapped and choking. What mattered was I had made the choice to try and help, and it had been a mistake.

But there weren’t any right answers for something like this, was there?

If I had left, I probably wouldn’t have gotten stuck in the tree, but I could have just as easily fallen down a hole, or tripped on a root, or fallen into a lake—not that I was anywhere close to water, but at this point, I was starting to doubt things like location really mattered. The only thing that mattered was that the world was a terrifying place, and I was trapped within it, destined to become nothing more than fertilizer for this _stupid tree._

If I didn’t do anything, I would die. If I did something, I’d probably still die.

I made the choice to keep moving because it was the only thing left to do. There shouldn’t have been enough room to crawl, but I did. I shouldn’t have had enough air to cry, but I think I did that, too. It was hard to tell what pain was mine when there was so much moaning around me. There was something wet on my face. I remember that. It might’ve just been sap. Maybe blood. If I was crying, it wasn’t because I had made the choice to.

Somehow, I found my way inside the stump. It was marginally better than being underground, but just as suffocating. When I finally managed to find a moment to spit out all the dirt in my mouth, I realized that the wood around me was moving closer, constricting my body in increasingly uncomfortable positions.

Instead of just being consumed by the tree, I was becoming it. The branches around me were squeezing tight enough to cut off blood flow, but I couldn’t break free, because they were my arms. The trunk was pressing against my stomach, squeezing my ribs, but this was the pain of having a chest, wasn’t it? It was killing me, but it was me. I was so small and so so tall and I still couldn’t _breathe._

I was definitely crying at that point. Just another voice in a choir of moaning and suffering. I screamed at the trees around me, demanding to know why they hadn’t warned me, why they hadn’t done something to _help me,_ but none of them responded. They just kept crying out with their own pain. And I cried with them, until I was nothing more than another member of the chorus.

But in a weird way, I felt sorry for them. I wasn’t sure if they had trapped me on purpose, but if they had, it hadn’t been malicious. They had just been so caught up in their own pain that all they wanted was someone to suffer with. I don’t think any of them thought they could be saved. Maybe they couldn’t be. Maybe whatever trapped them had made them all more tree than human, and I was too late to try and help them.

But I could still help me.

Despite how painful the whole experience was, I couldn’t shake the childish certainty I had that my dad would swoop in and rescue me. And even though I couldn’t breathe, I still had my voice.

I started screaming for my father. The trees around me might need to beg for G-d to save them, but my faith in that moment was for someone else. Obviously, he’d come get me. All he needed was to know where I was.

The louder I screamed, the quieter the moans of the other trees got. Despite the layer of wood between us, they had never sounded muffled, but the longer I yelled, the farther away it all got.

Eventually, I heard my dad calling my name. We both started crying then, relieved that this ordeal was finally almost over.

It had taken my dad an entire afternoon to find me. Even though it barely felt like even one hour to me, I’d been gone long enough for my dad to have enlisted everyone in the park to look for me, along with half of our synagogue. According to my uncle, my dad had burst in in the middle of a service and demanded everyone inside help find me.

Eventually, they managed to tear enough bark off the tree that I could climb out. Somehow, I had ended up at the very front of the trail. Wherever the crying forest had gone, it had left without me.

Despite everything I had been through, though, I wasn’t even that dirty. My palms were bleeding and my knees were skinned and I was still coughing up dirt, but my clothes were almost untouched, save for a few chips of wood that had gotten stuck when I walked out. I remember thinking how spacious the tree looked, now that I was finally free. I don’t think I actually realized it was hollow until I saw it.

My dad could see I wasn’t in any shape to walk, so he carried me back to our car. No matter how far away we got, I could still hear the forest’s cries echoing in my mind.

Some things just won’t let you forget them.

I never saw those trees again, but I could taste the dirt for weeks after. My mom took me to see a doctor, but all they could do was prescribe me an inhaler for all the wheezing I was doing. I actually got diagnosed with asthma, though, obviously, that was the least of my worries. An inhaler wouldn’t stop me from remembering how afraid I had been in the forest. Nothing could save me from my own fear.

No matter how hard they tried, my parents couldn’t get me to go outside. They could barely convince me to go to school. I stopped listening to what anyone asked me to do, including my teachers, though not to the point I got in any real fights about it. I was a quiet kid, but I was also suspicious. I had gotten trapped because I had gone off on my own, but more importantly, I had gotten trapped because I had _listened._

If I had known not to trust the trees, I would have been safe. Most of all, I blamed myself for that.

I’d been the same way in school, honestly. If I got in trouble, it’d usually be because I’d gone along with something someone told me to do. I’d never been really great at impulse control or sarcasm, so if a kid told me to jump off a bridge, well, I’d probably of considered it. But now, things were different.

I got in a fight with all of my friends and cut contact with them the day after. They’d never been the best to me, but I don’t think they were as evil as I wanted to believe they were. Looking back, we did have a lot of fun together. But after that, every time they laughed, all I heard was crying trees.

I don’t think they realized they were taking advantage of me. They just saw me as a weird kid who’d go along with any dare and to them, that sounded cool. But being that kid hadn’t been cool, especially when I was getting increasingly paranoid about the choices others wanted me to make. How could I trust that the trees were the only thing out there that wanted to hurt me? How could I believe that I’d be lucky enough to escape something like that twice? 

I spent the rest of middle school in an angry haze of paranoia and fear. All that, plus the dysphoria I was developing made for the worst few years of my life.

Every time I went outside, I swore I heard crying. Every time someone asked something of me, I could hear the sound of sobbing ringing in my ears. 

The only people I trusted were my parents, who had already proven themselves by saving me once. They tried their best to understand me, but all they could do was try and find me an outlet for the growing sense of hopelessness I felt.

They tried finding me a new hobby. I was signed up for a chess club for a while, but it after a while, we all realized I would hate any activity that involved so many choices. 

Eventually, my parents got me a guitar. As soon as I saw it, I _hated_ it. 

I hated the feeling of the smooth wood in my hands. I hated that my parents were clearly expecting me to _experiment_ and find a way to make a song about my experience or something stupid like that. I hated that every time I plucked one of the strings, it felt like tears.

My deep and burning hatred of the instrument lasted right up until I had my first lesson. 

I was, admittedly, a bit of a dramatic kid.

My instructor could tell I wasn’t too into it, so she told me she wouldn’t bother teaching me basic songs. The first thing I learned would be something that I wanted to play. Not just what she thought was right. It was hard for me to trust that she’d really give me a choice. The trees singing in my ears tried to convince me she was expecting a pop song, that this promise was only for something she thought was a good song.

So I chose the weirdest song I could think of. It might’ve just been MCR, or some emo band. I don’t remember. But my instructor just smiled and asked me to find a video of it online. So I did. And she taught me the chorus.

Things started getting better after that.

It’s silly, I know, but every time I played my guitar, it was like I remembered that there was still something that came from nature that didn’t want to hurt me. And not only that, it was _helping._ I learned my mom’s favorite song and played it for her on her birthday. I taught my cousin some chords so he could make his own song. Instead of hearing tears when I strummed my guitar, I heard safety. And then Tu B’Shevat came.

I don’t know if you know, but it’s basically new year, but for trees. Now, people kind of treat it like Earth Day, but it started out as a harvesting holiday. Tu B’Shevat was a way of signaling that fruit was safe to eat, and a time to bring the first offerings of the year to the temples.

My dad asked me if I thought that meant the trees would be safe for me. He told me he wouldn’t blame me if it was too soon.

I told him to wait another year. And then I asked him to sign me up for a whittling class.

The class started out whittling styrofoam, so I thought I was fine. But once I started feeling the block of wood in my hands, it got to be too much. I wasn’t sure if I was worried about getting trapped in it, or if the feeling itself was just that overwhelming. Either way, it was a bust. So I tried again.

I never tried anything that involved going underground. No convincing myself to be hugged, either. Any kind of pressure on my body was too much. Even just someone squeezing my hand was enough to make me shake. 

But by this point, I had a therapist, and he made it pretty clear to me that there was a difference between reclaiming something and retraumatizing yourself. I didn’t need to learn how to hold someone’s hand. What I needed was a way to make the world look beautiful.

Did you know that trees can prevent violence? It’s a funny thing to hear, considering everything I’ve been through, but neighborhoods without any trees are generally more violent than those with—though I’m sure there’s probably, like, a _ton_ of other factors for that, too.

But trees can prevent water pollution, too. When rain hits the trees, not all of it has a chance to flow to the dirt. The leaves know what they’re doing. They won’t let the world around them get poisoned.

And that’s not even getting into some of the weirder stuff we use trees for. Like latex, or aspirin. 

I know this seems like I’m getting off track now, but it’s important to me. No matter how little I could do for the trees I found, I could still carry them with me. I could translate their tears into sheet music, and play it at the beach. It would never be a pretty sound, but at least that way, they’d finally be free of the forest, if only just for a moment.

I didn’t actually celebrate Tu B’Shevat until I got to high school. That’s when I met Basil.

Xe hadn’t been going by Basil at the time, though the fact that I had somehow found a friend already named after a tree and xe had gone ahead and added another bit of flora to that was probably some kind of sign.

Basil Carvalho. 

A spice, and an oak tree.

It was hard for me to see the forest as a threat when I was so in love with someone named after a part of it.

I don’t need to go into how we met. I think we would have always ended up crossing paths somehow. There was no way I could have walked past them and not seen how similar we were. Some of it was more obvious than the rest. I had just gotten my hair cut short, and xe was working up the courage to grow xir’s out. Both of us lived in baggy clothes and watched the rest of our classmates from a careful distance.

And, most importantly, Basil never asked questions. Which was good, because I still wouldn’t answer them.

Basil used to be so _painfully_ shy. Xe never wanted to assume I’d agree to anything and would phrase everything in the most incredibly vague way to avoid rejection. Instead of inviting me over, xe would inform me of something we could do at xir house, but only if I wanted to. If I was stuck in a forest with Basil, it wouldn’t be because xe pushed me into it. Basil wouldn’t walk anywhere with me without turning back every five seconds to make sure I was there, and that I was still having fun.

Honestly, I think that’s part of why I invited xir along. I’m sure xir synagogue was doing something for Tu B’Shevat too, but I wanted Basil with me. Xe hated going outside even more than I did and I wanted to show xir that the world was more than just somewhere xe had to constantly slap away mosquitos or worry about tick bites and xir aching bones. Even if I still couldn’t appreciate the beauty of a blooming apple tree without thinking of prisons of roots and the demands of strangers, Basil deserved to see the world for the miracle it could be. And it’s hard to feel scared when you’re surrounded by people who love you. 

There was no choir crying, no echoing sobs of despair that came with the trees we planted. All there was was the laughter of a community coming together. Basil’s jokes as we dug holes together. My dad calling my name every so often to ask if I needed anything. My mom sighing fondly, and scolding him for being overprotective.

No matter how many trees we planted, none of them cried for me. Not even when the smell of dirt made my hands shake, or when the branches brushing against me made my voice waver.

We left early. I had to wash my hands ten times before I could convince myself I was actually free of dirt, but I still felt better than I had all year. Because now, I had something else I could carry with me.

I won’t forget the feeling of Basil’s hand leading me into the shade for a chance to rest. And I’ll always remember the sound of their laugh joining mine. There’d be no more choirs of fear. Just the start of a series of duets performed with someone who loves me.

You didn’t need to hear most of this, I know. All you wanted was a scary story. And I can say for sure that getting lost in those woods was the scariest moment of my life. But that fear isn’t who I am. I’m not just the person who got lost in the woods. I’m the one who found their way home.

I guess I just wanted you to know that even after everything, I’m still okay.

Chag Sameach Tu B’Shevat.

  
  
**STATEMENT ENDS**

CURATORS NOTES:

Upon looking into Mx. Mendelson, it appears they may have been lying about being a “quiet child.” Their school records show them constantly getting into fights with both students and teachers. In addition, medical records show no signs of an asthma diagnosis, though they are, apparently, allergic to grass. The Wildwoods Woe, however, have appeared several times in our records, and Mx. Mendelson’s description of them seems to more or less match our other accounts. Try as they might, I believe they’re too human to lie about that.

In addition, it seems unlikely that we’ll be able to find the roommate mentioned from the little description given, though if we do somehow manage to track them down, I hope someone has a chance to talk with them about encouraging others to rewrite history.

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this is a bit atypical for a statement fic, but I think in this case, the recovery is more important than the actual event. Usher Foundation Lore comes from Parker, aka cuttlefishkitch. No one's going to travel all the way to DC to make a statement, so the Foundation is a bit more hands on and actually has the assistants go to different states and gather statements that way.  
> Also, fun fact! I chose the date the statement was taken because that's the Friday before Tu B'Shevat of that year. Another fun fact is that Basil's arthritis comes from xir getting Lyme disease as a kid.  
> And I'm definitely still working on another gerrytim fic, but I'm also recovering from some WILD carpal tunnel (apparently spending all day writing fanfiction can hurt your wrists a lot! who knew?) so it may take a while before that's actually posted.


End file.
